BAE cuts 500 staff
BAE Systems has announced it is cutting 500 staff across the UK with the loss of 90 jobs at its weapons business in Barrow.
As part of the programme three sites in Leeds, Guildford and Telford will be shut down. All the redundancies are from the company’s Global Combat Systems (GCS) vehicles and weapons business which employs 1,820 people nationwide.
BAE said it regretted the decision but it was necessary following the postponed development of a new utility vehicle by the UK government and the downturn in work associated with military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. It cut 200 staff from the business in November.
The group anticipates a slowdown in production of Howitzer guns at Barrow from 14 to 10 a month but it expects the order book to swell to nearly 900 this year, guaranteeing work at the site until 2011.
Around 100 staff at the sites earmarked for closure will be transferred to Leicester and Newcastle and BAE said it will help those losing their jobs with re-training.
GCS managing director David Allot said: “We must consolidate a fragmented site infrastructure to reduce fixed overheads, whilst at the same time transforming our skills mix to increase our UK focus on systems integration and win orders internationally,”
“While we clearly regret having to take this step, our forecast UK order intake has reduced and we have to match the size of our business appropriately to the projected nature and volume of workload.”
